On, by Adam Roberts

I recently finished reading a book called "On", by Adam Roberts. The concept itself intrigued me: what if the world was a tremendous vertical wall, and its inhabitants clung to life on the ledges and crags? It's a high concept, and a fascinating one, and Roberts does a good job of developing a lot of this world, as well as (eventually) backing it up with an explanation of how such a world came to be.

The book follows the adventures of a boy called Tighe, who falls off the world from his home village and travels far, learning the mysteries of the world wall. In this, the book does not disappoint. We get to see rather a lot of the world wall and learn a good deal about its inhabitants, very few of whom, it seems, are pleasant, well-adjusted people.

The problem, for me, was that the ending was too abrupt and was far from the inevitable conclusion it felt like it should have been. Tighe's travels seem somewhat aimless, too. By the end, I wondered what it had all been for, except to speculate on a world turned sideways. So, my final assessment is somewhat mixed. I enjoyed the concept, and the story was told well enough, but the ending made me feel that the whole enterprise was futile.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I looked up some other books by Roberts, but I won't be reading them.
PPS - High concepts aside, I need to enjoy the story, too.

Exercise app review: Zombies, Run!

I took the exercise app Zombies, Run! for a spin on the weekend, just through "episode 1". For the full experience, I used no music and had zombie pursuits switched on. On the whole, I like the app - I get the feeling that the story will unfold in an interesting way, and that's probably what I'm in for. Base building is not much of a draw to me, but I see the appeal for other people. As I said, I'm mostly in to see how the story plays out, and I'm keen to do more running to discover more of it. Which would be the whole point.

The feature that didn't get me were the zombie pursuits. The voice announced "Warning: zombies nearby" or something to that effect. Okay, I thought, better put on a bit more speed. They're zombies, though. No need to overdo it. Pretty soon, the voice announced "Warning: zombies 50 metres". Oh, okay, they must have started closer than I thought. Better speed up some more, to a fast run. I swear, before I'd gone another 10 metres, "Warning: zombies 17 metres". What? Alright, done with this. I break into a full sprint. "2 items dropped, zombies distracted". I slowed to a walk, exhausted.

This pattern continued a few times over my run, and it got tiresome (which I suppose is better than winding up dead in a real zombie pursuit). This did not seem to be helpful to me. How fast am I supposed to be going? My usual speed is 9.5 to 10kph. Granted, this weekend I was not at my best. I'm recovering from a cold and I haven't been for a proper run in a few weeks. Still, when the voice tells you "If you've got two legs and can go faster than a slow shamble, you should be fine, right?" it's demoralising to have three or four successful zombie attacks per run. I went looking for how to switch off that feature later and couldn't find it. I hope that doesn't mean I'm stuck with it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I can turn zombie pursuits off again, I'll keep using the app for now.
PPS - If not, I'll start using my running time to catch up on podcasts.

The Martian

This week I finished reading The Martian by Andy Weir, and I loved it. Ask anyone around me: I couldn't shut up about it. I wanted to keep reading, and I stayed up late to do it, which is a big compliment for me.

The story is about an astronaut who gets accidentally stranded on Mars when his team has to evacuate. That sounds more careless than it was, though - they had good reason to think he was dead and good reason to leave early when they did. A lot of the book is Mark's personal log as he struggles to survive in a harsh environment with equipment that was never meant to last that long. The sense of humour and resilience he displays through the ordeal is endearing, and the way he solves his technical problems (and causes some others) is fascinating to me, too. The writing flows surprisingly well for a book that is (almost) all mission logs, and I was with the story right through the end. It wouldn't get out of my head.

So, basically, I loved it. If you love stories of survival, the idea of manned space exploration and good-natured characters with indomitable humour, this is one for you.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think the movie has great potential.
PPS - There are no aliens in this sci-fi. Mark is "the Martian" because he lives on Mars.

Why I started using Pushbullet

For some time I was using Firefox as my primary web browser everywhere - at home and at work, on my netbook and also on my phone via the mobile version. I would often pull open tabs from one device to another via the Sync functionality, and it worked pretty well ... as long as it had synchronised by the time I wanted to pull the tabs around and I hadn't closed the source browser before the sync had finished.

Then my phone started misbehaving, I started a new job where Chrome worked better with the web proxy and the whole system fell apart. I looked briefly at XMarks, which is supposed to have cross-browser tab sync, but I couldn't get that working at all.

So I installed Pushbullet, based mostly on the fact that it was a channel available in IFTTT. Now, even though I'm using Firefox at home, Chrome at work and the stock Android browser on my phone, I can push tabs instantly from one device to any other, as well as send small files to and fro and get weather alerts via IFTTT. It's very handy. It was an adjustment to go from a "pull" mentality to "push", but not bad.

The one feature that doesn't quite work is sending SMS from my desktop - I can send texts just fine, and I know they are received because people respond, but there is no record of them going out at all. Not on my phone, not on the Pushbullet browser plugin. Other people have this problem with the feature and for some of them it works to go out and back in to the messaging app or restart their phones. That hasn't worked for me, but I'm not too concerned. I'm very happy with the other features and I plan to keep using them for some time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm very happy with the way another machine doesn't have to be online for a push.
PPS - I prefer my multi-machine software to allow that.

Ninite

Ninite is a great tool for getting a lot of software up and running quickly. I've used it a few times recently. I see three problems with it, though. One, there's no way to tell what the installer is configured for before running it. Two, there no way to exclude or include programs once it's created. Three, it doesn't have a huge range of software in its library. If you want a new program in your Ninite installer, you have to go back to ninite.com, tick everything you had in the last one and anything new you want. If it changes again, you need another new installer which, as mentioned above, will give no indication what is inside it until it's running. I like Ninite as a quick start for a new system, or as a multi-update tool, but the best way I can see to use it is to go to the website every time, get a new installer and then discard it after it's done. And even when you do, you'll have to go elsewhere for some of your other software.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's good that it avoids bundled toolbars and things.
PPS - And it's quick and painless, too, so there's that.

Git

I've had to learn to use Git, which is the most popular distributed version control system in the software world. I was quite happy with Bazaar, a different version control system, because it fit very well with the way I worked on my own, whereas Git was designed primarily to be fast for thousands of developers working in very distributed teams over the internet. None of that describes how I work, but I've been outvoted by the world.

The biggest problem I encountered while learning was the "working over the internet" part. Every tutorial and every third-party tool I tried always reached a point where it began assuming I was working from a remote server, complicating matters and failing to teach me what I needed to know. It was a very frustrating situation to be in, because I'm trying to accomplish very simple goals - well within the software's capabilities - but it's already been presumed that complex dealings with remote servers are the norm. This seems especially galling to me, because Git is distributed, and should have no need of a server, but the first thing people do with it is say "Yeah, but how do I put it on a central server?"

I've successfully imported all of my Bazaar history into Git repositories, though, so at least that part went well.

Git works, especially for what it was designed for. That's part of why it's become the de-facto industry standard for distributed version control, even if most people use it in a heavily centralised mode. Compared to Bazaar, I like how easy merges are to perform. In Bazaar, there were more conflicts when merging. In Git, merging is relatively simple and quite often conflict-free. More conflicts are resolved automatically, anyway. That's pretty good. It's also the part that took me the longest to learn.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm happy enough that I made the switch.
PPS - I'm not as happy that it wasn't entirely my choice.

Criticising art

The only valid way to criticise someone's art is to make better art. You're not allowed to just say "that sucks", and you're definitely not allowed to say "that sucks and you should stop making art forever". If you want to say some artwork is bad, whether painting, drawing, writing, acting, film-making, music, whatever, then your only recourse is to make something better.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If your retort is "but I can't", then you're making my point.
PPS - The world has enough critics and not enough artists.

Rating quality by true or false questions

Games, movies and books tend to be rated on a 1-10 scale, 7 being the lowest and 9 being the highest, as they say. Or 1-5 stars, which is pretty much the same. As a game reviewer, I've heard, you can expect a hard fight to get anything outside that 7-9 range published as your official score, if you work for a major outlet. If you don't work for a big publisher, then obviously you do what you like, so this post doesn't apply to you.

This 1-10 or star-rating scale is heavily skewed to the top end, is what I'm saying, and it's hard to decide what it means. Is an "8" game always better than a "7"? Probably not, if they're in different genres and you prefer one genre over another. It all depends on the reviewer's taste, their mood on the day, the rest of the audience (for movies or live shows) and so on. Some publications try to get around this "all in one" score by rating individual aspects for their reviews. For games, it might be "music", "sound", "graphics", "gameplay" and whatever else. For movies it would include "plot", "script", "performances" ... you get the idea. It's slightly more helpful, but still not objective.

I think it would be instructive to try a binary categorised rating system. For a set of aspects of the work, the reviewer answers "yes" or "no" and that's it. "Was the music enjoyable?", "Was the plot free of gaping holes?", "Did the movie/book/game feel too long?" Things like that. Now we have a way to break down enjoyment of a work and give it an honest score percentage (depending on how many "good" boxes it ticked). No mucking about saying "Well, I thought the music might have been a 3, maybe 3.5 stars, but I said that about that other movie last week, and this was better than that. Better make it 4". Just "Yes, music was good". It's still subjective, but it's harder to lie to yourself and worm around your answers if they're "yes/no" questions. Hopefully, if you ask the right questions, preferably across a broad sample of people, you'll get a representative rating, plus a solid data set to back it up.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you ask the right questions, this could work for a lot of situations.
PPS - And if you match answers with a user profile, the ratings can reflect the taste of individual readers.

Reviewing free items

The practice of sending free stuff to reviewers doesn't result in the same kind of review as you would get from someone who had to pay for the item. A person who got a gadget or accessory or whatever for free will naturally place a different value on it from someone who paid. The reviewer who gets, say, a free Microsoft Surface Pro 2 just because a lot of people follow him, will feel like it's a pretty sweet deal. And why wouldn't he? He's probably also got so many other tablet computers that he's already got his whole family covered for Christmas. It doesn't even have to last for him, because he'll probably get the next generation for free when that comes out in a year.

Someone who paid for the tablet will need it to last. They'll need it to be worth what they paid, not just do cool stuff. He probably already resents the cash outlay he had to make and so starts with a negative impression that needs to be overcome. A reviewer who gets the same gadget for free is already grateful for that, so the minor quibbles are forgiven and forgotten where they might be a dealbreaker for everyone else.

I'm not saying free stuff for reviewers should stop, or else a lot of reviews will also stop. I'm just saying I'd like to know up front whether a review unit was free so I can calibrate my reading accordingly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If anyone wants to send me a free tablet computer to review, I'd be happy to do so.
PPS - Any make or model will do. :)

BuildMaster review

I've been using a program called BuildMaster for my personal software projects for a while now, and I have to say I am a fan. All I've really been doing with it is managing builds and releases for little apps that manage personal data for me - tracking spending, making notes, keeping time at work - but it's still been really helpful.

Previously, I would develop code up to a certain point, manually deploy it, use it for a bit, realise it had bugs, fix it a bit again, then leave it alone for a while. Repeating that process, even though I was using source control, I would grow less and less confident in the code itself and the releases I had done. What version am I running here? Could be anything. Where did it come from in source control? Can I get it back without having to fix the code I'm updating now? Not unless you figure out all the other answers first.

That's what BuildMaster does for me and my one-man, self-serve software shop. Because I'm naming releases, numbering builds and labelling them in source control, it's all tied together very nicely. Because I have set up an ad-hoc testing environment between development and production, I can do some tests before promoting a build and be confident that, should it be necessary, I can revert to a previous build or get back exactly the previous code version if I need to, without searching the source control history for what looks right.

There's a lot more the BuildMaster can do - integrating with issue tracking, automated testing, databases and so on - and some things I wish it could do natively, such as integrating with Bazaar, my personal source control system of choice, but it has been a real boon to my personal projects so far, and I intend to keep using it at least for that. If I can convince the company to use it, I think it would help at work. We have similar problems to what I had, but on a larger, more annoying scale.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We need something at work, in any case.
PPS - Every software shop needs some kind of system, even something manual.

Google Now

At a prompt from my phone, I switched on Google Now, just to see what it was like. On a positive note, I like that it warns me in advance of traffic delays between wherever I am and home and work, as long as I remember to check. What's more, I didn't have to tell it where I work, it just figured it out, presumably from where I spend most of my working hours. That's both cool and a little bit scary. The weather alerts work about the same as my previous alert widget, so that's kind of a neutral change. The big negative aspect is what it did to my calendar reminders.

I rely on getting audible reminders from my phone about upcoming appointments, and Google Now does provide cards on that, but it does so in complete silence and invisibility until I go to check. At that point, I always see a weather alert, plus maybe a note that says I've got "other cards" to display. Tapping that button gives a several-second delay that might, eventually, tell me about the appointment I missed half an hour ago because of the silent "reminder". I found that I had to disable Google Now for my calendar, then turn reminders back on in my calendar app. I can live with that, but it seems like an odd implementation choice.

I've seen a couple of cards for nearby restaurants, which I thought was interesting at first, but now it seems more like advertising to me. "Hey, I noticed you're near the Hog's Breath Cafe! Why not stop in for a steak?" When I'm looking for somewhere to go, it might be good, but Google can't know when that is.
I've also started using the reminders system via voice commands. "Remind me tomorrow morning to call Dad". "Remind me when I'm at the shops to pick up milk". Location-based reminders are really handy, and creating them in natural speech is a huge plus.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Google Keep also does location reminders now.
PPS - You just can't set them up the same way.

Samsung Galaxy SII Review

At the beginning of 2013, I upgraded my phone to a Samsung Galaxy S2, which is a fair bit more powerful and capable than my previous Google Nexus S. From that point of view, I'm very happy with it. It's got more storage and more memory, so it can handle video without choking, where my previous phone basically drew the line at audio. The screen is a bit larger, too, which is good, and the battery usually lasts me the whole day as long as I save battery-intensive tasks (such as aforementioned video) to the end of the day.

Almost everything else is a disappointment. Samsung, of course, loaded it up with their own inadequate launcher program and their decrepit bizarro-world Samsung Apps store, plus several crapware apps that can't ever be uninstalled and are difficult to distinguish from real apps.

The hardware leaves a bit to be desired, too. The phone will frequently turn itself off for no apparent reason (eg, sitting flat on my desk can trigger it) and the mic and speaker work just barely well enough for phone calls. It can't hold onto a WiFi connection to save its life, and just the other day it ignored my selected alarm tone and volume settings, electing instead to play the default alarm tone at full volume.

In short, my Android phone is less reliable than my desktop computer was in the 90s, with less control and more broken software. And you can't take it away from me, because now I feel as if I need it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I have been informed that some of these issues are due to a Samsung software update.
PPS - And the whole review is moot anyway since the phone is outdated now.

Browser speed dial page comparison

Compared to how other browsers handle it, Internet Explorer is pretty bad on the "speed dial" page. Firefox shows a full-page, 3x3 grid of your most frequent visited sites, and usually including thumbnail previews. Sometimes it doubles up on sites.

Chrome has 2 rows of thumbnails, titles below each one, with favicons in their bottom left corners, which looks pretty good.

IE, on the other hand, has 2 rows of 5 tiles, all white, and only seems to manage a favicon in the top left corner some of the time, plus a weird coloured bar at the bottom which I guess represents how frequently the site is visited. If they're already arranged in order of visit frequency, why have the bar at all? The text usually seems to be URLs rather than page titles.

I only use IE for work, and it does have all my most frequently-visited work-related sites listed, but because it's only text and the titles are rarely helpful, I find it much easier to bookmark them and use the menu instead. I think Microsoft have overestimated the usability of text vs pictures. Even their own IE add-ons gallery doesn't come up with a real title, just a URL.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I had to award a prize, it would go to Chrome.
PPS - I've just found it the most usable and consistent implementation of the feature.

Braid review

I really liked playing through Braid. It was short and used a unique play mechanic added onto a familiar genre - in this case, time control in a platformer. It makes a big difference to the way you play when, instead of dying and restarting the level, you just rewind time and try again. I was much more reckless and willing to try difficult or dangerous things, because progress is never really lost. It is still a challenge, though, because there are the time mechanism puzzles, playing with the concept and twisting your brain. Lots of fun, though I had to consult a guide for a couple of puzzle solutions. One in particular was the way a puzzle display in the background acted as an extra platform, and I just didn't notice.

The ending, the very final level, was where the real "wow" factor came in, though. I don't want to spoil it, in case you feel inclined to go and play it yourself, but it was, to me, the cleverest part of the entire game, and put a new spin on everything that came before. So do go and play it now.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I realise this is not the newest of games.
PPS - I just wanted to say what I thought of it.

TeamViewer review

One of the software tools I used to rely on every single day was Windows Live Mesh, because it could synchronise large collections of files and provide remote computer access in a simple, set-and-forget way. Microsoft decided to can that entire useful service to focus on making a Dropbox clone instead, which is what led me to install TeamViewer on all my computers. My cousin-in-law pointed me to it, and I can't thank him enough.

TeamViewer does the remote access job of Live Mesh, plus a couple of other tasks, and I am very pleased with it. It works faster than Live Mesh did, and more reliably, in my experience. Once I'm logged in on all my machines, I just choose one from a list, double-click, and it's like I'm right there in front of it.

But TeamViewer has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, too. You can start a one-to-one VPN with a connected machine, too, which allows you to transfer files and access private web services too. That's pretty handy. And with the Android app, I can do all this from my phone as well.

The most useful thing it does, however, is allow me to connect to family PCs for that all-too-frequent family tech support. I set it up on my Dad's machine, and if he's having trouble, I can log in and help, rather than trying to talk him through it blind, which is like helping a panicky passenger through land a plane over the radio. It's much better to actually see what's going on and be able to help with my mouse and keyboard.

For all these reasons, TeamViewer gets my personal recommendation, and it's staying in my toolbox.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's free for non-commercial use.
PPS - I haven't needed it for commercial use yet.

Cubby file synchronisation

I've been having some trouble keeping all my media libraries in sync across my machines with Windows Live Mesh. It's getting stuck on certain files, but it won't say which ones, because that's just not how Live Mesh rolls. In searching for a solution online, I learned that Microsoft has actually discontinued the program. It will probably keep working for a while longer, but eventually they'll turn off those servers and everything will stop working completely.

So I went looking for an alternative, and gave Cubby a go. In short, it's not ready for me yet, but that might be because it's still in beta.

The test collection was a set of videos on my two home PCs. I installed Cubby on both machines, set them to sync the folder and was pleased to see that they showed progress indicators for the files that were being copied. I left it overnight and came back in the morning to find one of the machines offline and the other one saying that everything was up to date, but my online storage was now full. I didn't want to store these files online, just sync between machines, so I fixed the settings, logged back in on the second machine and left them going again.

After work, the two machines both claim to be in sync, but contain different collections of files.

On the whole, I liked Cubby. The setup was clean and easy, adding folders was quick, though could have been clearer or more straightforward, and I liked the progress indicators as I said. But, interface aside, until it can handle the actual file sync operations smoothly, I can't recommend it for actual use.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I still need something else.
PPS - I'll keep looking.

Keymonk

I've thought for some time that we are not really done with touch-screen text input yet. The QWERTY keyboard and its associated skills don't necessarily translate very well into the touch-screen era. Swype and its copycats do fairly well at speeding up text input, but it's still not as fast as touch typing.

This may be where double-swipe keyboards help. I've started to use one, called Keymonk, and for a while it felt very awkward, but now I'm getting used to it, and I think this might be the break I've been looking for. Initially I had some trouble with short words and punctuation, but those are common problems with any word-predicting soft keyboard. The one big difficulty I have with it is when my thumbs collide in the middle of the screen. I feel as if I haven't planned well enough, but I shouldn't need to plan how I'm going to type a word. I guess I'll get better more practice.

Check out this video of someone smashing the world record for the fastest SMS:
This is approaching physical keyboard touch typing speeds, which is what makes me think it might be the missing secret sauce. Kudos to Keymonk for a great app!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't tried yet on our Android tablet, but I know Keymonk can handle more than two-finger swipe typing.
PPS - I wonder whether eight-finger swiping is hard to learn and confusing for the keyboard.

AirDroid review

I like the AirDroid app because it lets me use my computer to send and receive texts from my phone, and the physical keyboard is much faster and easier to use. But it's still a bit limited. I have to run it on my phone, log into a website locally, and use the custom pseudo-windows interface to accomplish that task. And if my phone loses WiFi connection at any point, I have to log in again.

As for the rest of AirDroid, not much else of it is useful beyond the clipboard access and file management. If you don't have a cable with you, it could be useful for copying files between a computer and your phone, and since it runs in any web browser, you don't need to install anything on the computer itself.

In all, it's a solid app, but the interface makes it look like it does more useful things than you will probably use it for.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - One small annoyance is that using a secure connection is not the default.
PPS - It really should be.

YouTube Watch Later review

YouTube has a "Watch Later" function, but there are some problems with it. First and most obviously, it only works on YouTube, which is not all the video on the web. For anything that's not on YouTube, you're out of luck.

It will preload to your Android phone, when you're on WiFi and charging, but still needs a network connection to watch. That's not "offline", it's buffering. It also makes me nervous about its actual mobile data usage. Despite preloading on WiFi, a recent train trip cost me 129MB of mobile data on the YouTube app, clearly identified by Android's bandwidth tracking. That's more than half my monthly quota. So it's an unreliable and unpredictable feature, too.

It can't be used to defer videos before they start playing. If you're on 3G, you will take a data hit as they start buffering, then you change your mind. It also seems that the app doesn't keep a list of what it's preloaded, so managing your list when your connection drops is not possible.

In general, it feels like they've taken a step towards fixing buffering issues and high data usage on slow networks, but that same step could be used for a truly great offline experience, and they have refused to go that far. Presumably "offline" video starts making official rights holders nervous about downloading and piracy. YouTube has a delicate balance to strike, between appearing to be a "safe" place to upload video that is streamable but not downloadable (which is a fallacy in itself - streaming is a form of downloading) but also treating their patrons as valuable, which is impossible if they are also the attackers in YouTube's security scenarios.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I won't be using it again unless I've got WiFi on the train, which is pretty rare.
PPS - Or if I'm watching on my desktop, which makes the queue less useful.

Astrid app review

I've been using Astrid for my action lists on my phone and on their website for a little while now, and it's mostly good, but there are a couple of annoyances. Some are to do with the associated website.

For starters, the "forums" link on the website is broken. Either there are no forums any more, or they no longer live at "feedback.astrid.com". Whatever the case, I can't leave feedback there for the developers to see, so I'll have to do it here and hope for the best.

Next comes inconsistent handling of the Enter key. When you're adding a task on the website, if you hit Enter, it adds the task. Simple. If you're adding a comment to a task and hit Enter, it adds a new line. And you can't just compromise and get used to hitting Tab then Enter to go to the submit button, because Tab goes to different places from those two boxes. Not big, but I notice it every couple of days and it starts to grate.

A feature I wish Astrid had is projects or sequences of actions. You can have lists, and I do, and actions can belong to lots of lists, but a list is not a project where one action follows another in a logical sequence, only appearing one at a time. I would appreciate that.

Lastly and perhaps most seriously, the synchronisation to and from the phone frequently un-deletes and un-completes actions. If I mark a task as complete on the website, then open Astrid on my phone, the synchronisation (when it eventually finishes) is quite likely to pick up that task and un-complete it, adding it back to the list. I don't know why that is, but it's quite annoying. I frequently have to check my lists one by one just to make sure tasks have not started re-appearing after I completed them. The saving grace with this one is that Astrid displays a log of recent activity that I can visually scan for the prefix "un-" to see what has gone wrong.

In all, though, I do quite like Astrid. It's better than the text files I was trying to use before, it stays in sync automatically (which is something I demand of every program since I started using it) and the visual style is easy to use and kind of fun. I'm going to keep using it for now, but I'm hoping that some of these bugs, problems and desired features can be fixed or added in the near future.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's always a pain to change to a new app.
PPS - Data migration in any form is a pain.

UPDATE: I emailed Astrid support about my un-completion/un-deleting issue, and they provided this response:

This is usually the case in a bad sync. Sometimes the logged in data doesn't get sent to the phone properly.

When this happes, usually logging out and logging in will fix the issue.

Settings -> Sync & Backup -> Astrid.com -> Log Out
Then, "Synchronize Now"

If it's still having trouble, this page will usually provide an error report
as to why sync failed.

For me, that seems to have solved the problem.